Jumping on the Bandwagon – Why Should We?

My friend Alex wakes up to the sound of festive celebration. A triumphant drumbeat is marshalled on the television: The Supreme Court of the United States declares that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. He smiles, grabs his smartphone and posts a tweet in laudation of this ‘historic event’.

What the world doesn’t know is the fact that this Alex, a so-called ‘left-wing humanist’, doesn’t care that much for the rights of those homosexuals. As far as he’s concerned, it doesn’t matter whether legalizing same-sex marriage is going to make the world a better place or not.

Heck, he doesn’t even believe in marriage, after all. He is merely humming to the tune, to the triumphant drumbeat of revolution. Now that his tweet—or blog post, or Facebook status, whatever—has been posted, he continues life. Preparing a breakfast, perhaps, and then looks for another revolution that would bring about another ‘historic event’.

Don’t get me wrong, I know there are a lot of sincere humanist. Oftentimes, though, it is the phonies who shout the loudest and—to their compatriot’s dismay—ruin the whole campaign. After gaining victory, they usually veer from the original battle of defending the rights of minority to downright offensive: attacking the majority, whose power is now rapidly declining.

Without the pretence of trying to please everyone, I would like to argue that homosexuality is wrong and sinful. Boring, isn’t it, the word sinful? Yes, but unfortunately, truth is rarely found in amusement parks. But let us go further beyond right and wrong. Let us examine what this triumphant drumbeat really means.

In this century of frequently worshipped self and increasingly empirical mind, anything ‘divine’ is a strange thing. So it makes no wonder that many good people frowns upon the idea of divine-sanctioned marriage. Stripped of the word ‘divine’, there stands the word ‘marriage’ naked: as a union.

“Union of what?” you might ask.

Well, that’s why the word ‘naked’ is befitting, because you can dress it with your own clothing as it pleases you. It could be, for example, a union between a garlic and an onion. Or between one garlic and two and a half pound of onions. As it pleases you, really.

So the question now becomes: who gets to define ‘marriage’? Surely we have to agree on some specific definition of the word. Our society depends on mutual understanding of important things like this, right?

Yes, and that’s the core idea of this whole issue. Legal aspects aside, semiotics aside, I would like to present you with a different point of view: that we can see ourselves from our answer to that question. And we can see mankind from society’s answer to that question.

Any religion on earth views marriage as a divine-sanctioned union between man and woman. This was the prevalent idea until some group of thinkers brought ‘Enlightenment’ by erasing God from the equation, which means that human shall define marriage. They were initially few in numbers but they kept rising in popularity and finally boomed during the decades of Sexual Revolution, when marriage becomes more and more obscure.

What can one see in that historical narrative? A gradual dissociation from God. In this sense, the recent legalization of same-sex marriage is not the final nail in the coffin for theism, but an alarming reminder of where we humankind are going: complete dissociation with God.

What can be our help, now that we have already gone this far? I don’t know, I’m afraid. Or maybe I already knew. Maybe you already knew. But due to either enormous peer pressure or a revolting mind (or both) we’re all scared of being called a ‘troublesome bigot’, or a ‘medieval monk’, or a ‘bitter prude’, or simply, a pain in the arse.